


Mark Me For I Am Known To Be Unknown

by anglophileprussian



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 23:52:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11046942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anglophileprussian/pseuds/anglophileprussian
Summary: Friendship can be formed in many different ways and between the unlikeliest people. Charles Emerson Winchester III doesn't want to be friends with any of these people, not that he has much of a choice.





	Mark Me For I Am Known To Be Unknown

Friendship can be formed in many different ways.  
  
Some people bond over common interests or shared experiences. John Francis Xavier McIntyre and Charles Emerson Winchester III got to know each other when McIntyre vomited on Winchester's shoes as they were both taking off their surgical gowns. Winchester insisted that McIntyre pay for his dry cleaning. McIntyre told  _Charles_ , however he wanted to pronounce his stuck up name, could stick it and his cleaning bill up his ass. The next morning McIntyre was called in to meet the new head of his department, Charles Emerson Winchester III. If McIntyre had been less sober he might have found the situation as amusing as Winchester did.   
  
Friendship, on the other hand, was formed when Winchester came into post-op to tell McIntyre that his technique was rough and needed work. McIntyre took the opportunity to punch him in the nose and storm into his bosses' office to hand in his resignation (and he could have pretended that it was the punch and not the sickness and the temper that was going to get him fired in the end).   
  
He might have left for good if his patient hadn't gone critical. When he got back into the operating room, Winchester was already patching up his patient. He might have noticed the manic look to McIntyre's eyes or the white knuckles but all he did was give calm directions to his nurse, never looking up from his patient.   
  
McIntyre complimented his technique when they walked out of surgery and made it a point to not throw up on his shoes.   


 

  
  
They met up every other night at the bar because they both loved to argue. McIntyre wasn't allowed to drink at home anymore because it scared his daughters and Winchester didn't enjoy his family half as much as he pretended to. So Charles (and always Charles now, stretched out like a song in that lower class accent) complained about his sister who married a nouveau-riche tycoon and pretended that he wasn't expecting the rude comments he got back, in exchange for paying for their drinks. The stories were long and dry and it might have been an unfair exchange if John didn't drink so much.   
  
John liked the cheap stuff because if it didn't hurt he didn't want to drink it. Charles took the best they had and sipped it slowly, always slowly because the speed John finished them made him a little queasy. It was always 6 glasses in and two pretentious monologues later that John would start talking at all.   
  
The stories were like hiccups with abrupt starts and sudden stops. John would be reminded of something and begin some story about Korea (and it was always Korea, like he'd never done anything in the states worth mentioning) that would start with 'Hawkeye-' and end right there. Like Korea was only made up of the word. 'Hawkeye'. Then, there would be another drink.   
  
Hawkeye was the name from  _'The Last of the Mohicans'_  (yes, it wasn't fine literature but Charles had read it) but it didn't make sense. John wouldn't mention his children or his wife. Charles was sceptical of the wife because she didn't have a name even, but this Hawkeye? Hawkeye had a whole war.   
  


 

  
  
How does Charles find out about the letters? It's rather simple actually, he looked through John's mail. Really. It's simpler than it sounds.   
  
Charles has to deliver some paperwork that John has been artfully ignoring. When he can't find him at the hospital he looks through the personnel files for his address and has his driver bring him there. Although he can tell that John is not home because his car is not in his driveway, Charles is a good enough friend to knock on the front door and remind himself not to make any scathing comments on the landscaping. And pretend he's surprised when John's wife answers the door.   
  
She's prettier than he'd thought she'd be. With the way that John ignores her she should have been plain at the very least but she has blonde hair and an admirable figure that is certainly worth mentioning, especially to unmarried friends. She invites Charles in and he tells her that he just wanted to drop off some papers. She smiles and excuses her husband's absence, sitting at the desk they had in the corner. Even from across the room he can see the words 'Hawkeye' on a stack of letters, like a big, neon sign.   
  
He asks her very kindly if she wouldn't mind getting him a glass of water while he looked for the papers in his briefcase. It might take him a minute; he'd forgotten how many other papers he had in there.   
  
Then it was only a matter of looking through the papers. Hawkeye was a person. A person that John desperately wanted to contact. And, if the half written letter still on the blotter was any indication, Hawkeye Pierce was not writing back.   


 

  
  
No one was surprised when Charles was called to Korea to give a lecture. Charles didn't understand why John offered to drive him to the airport. He didn't understand why John said goodbye, with every word carefully enunciated as if Charles was slow. When he protested, John smiled like he saw something funny when no one else did.   
  
Charles never understands how John could have known already. 

 

  
  
Of all the MASH units in all of Korea, he had to end up in this one.   
  
He had to, really, because there was no better way to meet the brilliant Doctor Benjamin Franklin Pierce than face to face when they're already screaming. When that other idiot, the one who seemed too nice and smiled too much to be sincere, said Hawkeye the first time Charles wondered if he could be seeing the same thing that John had seen because he was clearly missing something.   
  
And the worst part? The worst part was that Hawkeye was just like John. The same jokes and  _Chaaaarles_  and once he tasted the swill they called liquor and it tasted like the stuff John enjoyed scraping off the barrels at their bar. Charles would say though, that John was a far better surgeon. Or, he was when he wasn't fainting.   
  
Once, Charles called Hawkeye 'John' right after surgery. Hunnicut was already walking away but Hawkeye. Hawkeye kept a close eye on him all day.   


 

  
  
_'Trapper?'_  he asked in his first letter home.  _'I must know how you acquired such a name'._  
  
John's letter back said that his wife had finally filed for divorce. His fainting seemed to have stopped. The bartender wouldn't let him drink anymore. And at the very, very bottom, an explanation. He didn't seem to require any in return.   
  
\----  
  
The trouble started with the priest.   
  
What trouble, you may ask, because there were several. Why, the trouble with Trapper John McIntyre of course.   
  
Charles was just getting out of surgery when Father Mulcahy stepped out of his tent and asked for him to join him for a moment. For someone who seemed eternally pleased with the world he had a somber look on his face, and Charles thought it best to humour him. He sat on the edge of the Father's cot and watched him shift some papers around on his trunk. He handed over an envelope.   
  
Charles barely glanced at the letter. There was only one thing it could be. Mulcahy kindly explained that the letter had gotten with his by accident. He hadn't noticed until he'd opened it.  
  
(Radar had seen it in the mail bag. It was one of dozen's Charles had received since arriving but it was the first one Radar had opened.)  
  
"I hardly see how the contents of my letters are any concern of yours."  
  
Father Mulcahy asked how Charles had come to know Doctor McIntyre.   
  
"I'm-, I was the head of his department at Massachusetts General Hospital."  
  
Mulcahy took the letter from Charles' outstretched hand, carefully removing its contents. Along with the letter itself was a packet of thick papers. John sent his psychiatric records from his weekly sessions to Charles because he didn't want his wife to find them. With the divorce proceedings still in motion, he didn't want to lose his kids.  Mulchay placed the packet on the top of the stack and waited.   
"I hardly see how what he says in his letters to me is any of your business either. Or anyone else's."   
  
"Hawkeye might like to hear any news you can spare," Mulcahy said.   
  
"If he wanted news so badly, you'd think he'd write."  
  
Charles tried to seem as though he was angry on the behalf of his friend and he was, a little. He was more infuriated though that someone had gone through his mail. With invasions like this, what was to become of his privacy? He stormed out of the tent and mumbled about it and successfully convinced himself that was all he cared about.   
  
Father Mulcahy frowned to himself as he sometimes did and, in a moment of uncanny clarity, called for Radar to find him Hawkeye, BJ, and Major Houlihan. 

 

  
  
Hawkeye was often angry. He was angry at everyone because the world was out to get him, to some extent, and he couldn't help but lash out every once and a while. He'd push and shove and say things he usually ended up regretting. When he was angry and wasn't shouting, BJ wouldn't know what to do with him. The news from Father Mulcahy had sent Margaret spitting with anger and embarrassment and that was understandable. Hawkeye's quiet acceptance and slow shuffling out of the tent was so uncharacteristic it was terrifying.   
  
Margaret could be seen (and heard) storming back to her tent from every corner of the compound. BJ retreated back to the Swamp and didn't notice that Hawkeye wasn't behind him until he got there. He exchanged a look with Charles as the two of them watched the procession of Margaret and a silent Hawkeye.  
  
He grabbed her arm. If she hadn't been so wound up she might have noticed his hand was shaking.   
  
"Why did you do it?"  
  
It was like she'd been doused in water. Her flame sputtered and stopped outright, shoulders inching down as she stared at Hawkeye. "It was affecting your performance in the operating room."  
  
"No."  
  
"No?"  
  
"That's not it so tell me, Margaret, why did you do it?"  
  
She looked around nervously but it didn't matter. There were three nurses leaning against the door to the latrines, two Swampmen looking through mosquito netting, and a Radar listening from the opposite side of the compound. If Hawkeye had the capacity for it, he might have taken the argument inside.   
  
"You were moping," she said. "It was unbecoming of an officer and it was affecting your work."  
  
You were miserable, she meant. I couldn't watch. They'd been careful friends for too long, almost died together too many times, for her to not realise how much it was hurting him. How much he was depending on what was waiting for him, and how much one letter could ruin it forever.   
  
Hawkeye nodded, and then nodded again. Then again.  Margaret watched his head bobble and gasped when he tightened his grip on her arm.   
  
"You are never, ever going to take my mail again, you got that? Just because you're a woman doesn't mean I won't soak you until your brain comes out your ears."  
  
She yanked her arm away and slammed the door to her tent.   
  
Hawkeye entered the Swap and kicked over the stove. BJ fiddled with his jacket and didn't say anything. Charles took out three pages of his stationary and a pen and left it on his cot as he left. 

 

  
  
No one said anything when Hawkeye spent the night in the mess tent with a candle, writing. The words were the size of ants, crawling across every inch of the paper to get every single word he had to fit. He always had a way with words and, when he had nothing to say, he said everything he could think of until he found it.   


 

  
  
Charles taped Hawkeye on the shoulder, jarring the man from his nap on a mess tent table. He pulled the paper scrunched between Hawkeye's fingers. Hawkeye, eyes blurred red and sad-tired, like John had always been when he mentioned his one-word war, whined in soft protest but Charles made a loud soothing noise. He very carefully folded the letter and put it in with his own in an envelope and sealed it.  
  
BJ would say that Charles was being unnaturally kind. Hawkeye just fell asleep again, pen ink smeared against his hair line. His hair always shone almost blue when he turned a certain way. If someone tried hard enough, they might be able to colour in the gray parts.   
  
\----  
  
Weeks later a large, manila envelope arrived. Hawkeye was so excited that he brought it to the mess tent, regaling everyone with stories from his friend and telling BJ every anecdote he could think of. The rush of friendship wouldn't last forever but Charles was satisfied with the meagre paragraph John had managed to send him. The overdue 'goodbye' was pages and pages long to compensate.


End file.
